Jobs 

Unemployment Stagnant at 9.1%:  On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the unemployment rate for the month of September stayed at 9.1% the same rate as August and the second highest monthly level in 2011.  Only 2 out of the last 30 months have seen unemployment below 9 percent (February and March 2011).  From March 2009 (the month after the failed $1.2 trillion “stimulus” was signed) through September 2011, unemployment has averaged 9.4 percent.  Prior to President Obama taking office, unemployment had not been above 9 percent in 28 years.

Spending

Taxing Millionaires Cannot Solve Deficits:  This week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced a proposal to offset President Obama’s new “stimulus” plan with a permanent 5.6 percent surtax on Americans with an adjusted gross income above $1 million beginning in 2013.  One problem with Democrat plans to soak higher earners is that there simply aren’t enough millionaires to pay for Washington’s spending binge.  According to the IRS, American’s making more than $1 million earned a total of $726 billion in 2009.  Even if the president taxed every millionaire in America at 100 percent, it would only reduce the 2011 deficit by 56 percent, leaving an annual deficit of $568 billion.  Washington is in the midst of a spending driven crisis and we cannot tax and spend our way out of it.

Medicare

Medicare’s Ever Increasing GDP Numbers:  In his September 2011 Heritage Foundation piece “The Case for Competition in Medicare,” Ethics and Public Policy Center Fellow James Capretta explains “In 1975, total federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid was 1.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). In 2010, it was 5.5 percent. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects spending on these programs, together with spending on the entitlement expansions in the 2010 health law, to reach 9.7 percent of GDP by 2030.”